Tide times are not coinciding with dawn patrolling and lunch breaking. So I tried to wait out the high tide a few hours. Before I went out there was another surfer standing on the beach stretching. When I walked near he said, “I’ve seen worse.” I added, “even the worst day is better than living in Kansas.” He nodded, “Good luck out there.”
My “waiting” gambit sor of paid off. The tide was moving from high to low, and the waves tended to improve the longer I was out there. These waves were borderline closeouts though so speed was of the essence! Unfortunately, I did not have such essence. Instead I would fly down the line as fast as I could, but invariably get clobbered before I got ahead of the curl. But the waves were super fun and I vowed not to leave the ocean until I finally beat the curl. And one time, I did, and it was awesome. (One of two things happened. Either I actually got the beed on a wave, maxed the speed on my Electric and actually outran one of those fast moving curls…or the tide changed enough and the curl of the wave slowed down some by the end of my session. I like to think it was the former, but it was probably the latter.) The guy that I’d spoken to on the beach happened to be paddling back out when I got off that wave. As he passed he said, “bitchin’.”
After I’d gotten out, I was strapping my board to my bike and these two nice German tourist ladies asked me, “is zis zee low tide or zee high tide?” I told them it was actuall mid-tide. They both became very animated and asked, “can vee valk on the beach then?” I had to do a bit of leg work after that question blind-sided me, but they wanted to know if they could walk down in the break or not.